Other view: End overzealous redaction policy now

There are not many things that are more important to the life of a community than public safety. It is the basis on which all other quality of life issues rests. It's hard to raise children, to foster economic growth, to care for things like nutrition and health if people don't feel it's safe to go outside.

The community, in other words, cares intensely about public safety. Each one of us has a stake in how our community is policed, and that includes knowing the details of arrests. And the truth is we have a right to care because these things profoundly affect our cities. Our neighborhoods. The streets we live on.

This is precisely what's so troubling about the drastic turn local police agencies have taken to withhold the names and other information about arrests. The new practice stems from a little-noticed Illinois court case, but really it has at its root legal uncertainty that the courts cannot allow to continue. In America, we do not arrest people in secret. It really is just about that simple.

A recent federal court ruling held that police violated a man's privacy in the course of leaving a parking ticket on his vehicle. It is an odd case, and one that to our eyes as non-lawyers appears to wildly overreach the meaning and intent of the law.

In response, though, Wausau and Marathon County, along with 16 municipalities in Wisconsin have begun redacting personal information on police reports. It is not rare, suddenly, to see a police report that in essence says "X was arrested today at X Street."

It is chilling, frankly, to anyone who expects openness and transparency from government.

The public entrusts law enforcement officers with a huge responsibility. No one else in civil society can take away another citizen's right of freedom of movement or other basic rights. We entrust it to police because it's in the public interest, because those who break the law harm all of us.

But the trade-off in an open society is that the administration of justice must be transparent. That's the citizen's check on law enforcement. It's an essential part of how an open society works. And it's how we ensure that each one of us has a stake and a say in the incredibly important work law enforcement does.

The Wausau Police Department and the Marathon County Sheriff's Department say they are responding with the new policy to the recommendation of their insurers. It's important to understand that there is genuine legal uncertainty here, created by the Illinois case. We need the courts to step in and clarify this for the public's benefit, and we argue that there's a strong case that this needs to happen very soon.

Still, it does not seem to be the case that local departments have their hands tied or are prevented from exercising their own judgment in this matter. The local interpretation is among the strictest and least transparent in the state. Local departments should relent in taking advice to "err on the side of caution" to extreme and even alarmist lengths.

Even Illinois municipalities - where the federal case originated, and where open government laws are considerably laxer than they are in Wisconsin - are not redacting in this way. Nor are the huge majority of Wisconsin municipalities.

It's hard to swallow the notion that Wausau and Marathon County are simply "erring on the side of caution" when that "caution" comes at the cost of transparency in law enforcement.

-Wausau Daily Herald

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Other view: End overzealous redaction policy now

There are not many things that are more important to the life of a community than public safety. It is the basis on which all other quality of life issues rests.

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